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Comment by amelius | Hacker News Reader

US's answer to Russia's Zircon missile?

https://www.military.com/equipment/weapons/why-russias-hyper...

> U.S. Aegis missile interceptor systems require 8-10 seconds of reaction time to intercept incoming attacks. In those 8-10 seconds, the Russian Zircon missiles will already have traveled 20 kilometers, and the interceptor missiles do not fly fast enough to catch up.

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I'm not convinced you want air breathing missiles for interception, you want solid rockets or something of that sort. There are Standard Missiles (SM-3) faster than Zircon, although they are for BMD defense.

Faster ESSM/SM-2/SM-6 could be developed, and reaction time could be lowered.

This is instead the equivalent to the Zircon.

The Sprint[1] missile accelerated at 100g. That's 0-mach 10 in 5s flat. It flew so fast in the lower atmosphere that it glowed white hot.

So, just saying there were some pretty fast missiles decades ago. There was also the HIBEX missile, with 400g acceleration.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)

Not quite sure why interceptor missiles would have to "fly fast enough to catch up" unless you're shooting at a missile departing from you (that is to say, unless you actually have to catch up with something).

You don’t always have missile interceptors on the target land. Aegis is a mobile platform that can be deployed anywhere, and being overflown is a real possibility. For example, your missile defense platform might be off the coast several km, and the target to intercept flies over it aiming for the land behind it. In this scenario, any interceptor launched from that platform would have to “catch up.”

No, it would just have to reach the target interception area in time. That's not quite the same as "catching up", although of course the possible radius within which this area must be located shrinks as a function of speed ratios.

And if by "flies over it", you meant the defense system as "it", that's still effectively point defense. Although this particular situation is unlikely for obvious reasons; the chance that your defense system would be exactly below the flight path of a missile while not being its target is small.

No. Russian Zircon is to deal with the next after nuclear strategic threat to Russia - US aircraft carrier groups. US pursue hypersonic weapons for different purpose - fast global much less than nuclear strike capability, ie. being able to strike any given target anywhere in like under half an hour. And thus not really much of hypersonic development in US - the cheap ballistic would do it better, especially with SpaceX driving down the cost of it. DOD is already excited that almost immediate delivery of 100ton, ie. instead of several C-130, payload by Starship anywhere in the world looks to be under $50M.

> US pursue hypersonic weapons for different purpose - fast global much less than nuclear strike capability

Ballistic missiles fly much, much faster than hypersonics. Speed is not their advantage.

Ballistic missiles give of bright, very hot exhaust plumes on leaving their silos. Any major world power with a down looking infrared satellite (or watching for "WTF was that launch in my wheat field" tweets from farmers"), will know when it launches, and have a relative idea of where it's headed and when it will land.

A hyper-sonic cruise missile is much more stealthy, giving it the element of surprise.

Pretty much and a counter against Chinese Hypersonic glide vehicles.

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